


12foot4

by azvin, Gammarad, Reishiin



Category: 11Foot8 Bridge (Anthropomorphic)
Genre: Gen, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-18 07:03:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21890179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azvin/pseuds/azvin, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/pseuds/Gammarad, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reishiin/pseuds/Reishiin
Summary: Feelings about the 11Foot8 Bridge’s new height were mixed
Comments: 9
Kudos: 25
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	12foot4

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magikarpeggio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magikarpeggio/gifts).



> Photos posted with permission of the photographers who wish to remain anonymous

In its previous incarnation, the Ryder truck had been a Penske. Still a seventeen foot long rental truck, but a different color, branding, everything. A real makeover.

Hadn't been a Penske for long. Two months, that was all, and then totaled. The truck didn't think about the bad part, the part right at the end. The truck didn't think about the good parts, either: refused to remember anything about being a Penske. 

The round of existence before that had been long and uneventful. The truck had spent nearly thirty years as a livestock transportation vehicle, the last twenty-two of which it had been owned by a veteran horse trainer in Lexington, Kentucky, parked outside the stables more often than not and driven with up to four equine passengers to races around the midwestern United States.

After thirty long years of reliable service, the truck had been new. Twice. There was still hope for _this_ chassis to last.

In the truck's three years with Ryder, there had been times it was afraid. Some drivers took risks with the truck and themselves. Like the time a driver took it around the "dead man's curve" in I-90 in downtown Cleveland at fifty miles an hour, nearly tipping the twelve foot tall truck over on its side. Or when a driver had gotten much too drunk for safety, and the truck found itself weaving in and out of lanes until finally being pulled over. Those moments of fear, each followed by a wash of relief when misfortune had been averted, became memories the truck often enjoyed when bored by the long days of interstate highway travel. 

If the truck sometimes shuddered when passing a Penske-branded vehicle, it was probably a suspension problem. One of the Ryder in-house mechanics should take a look at that.

The truck had been in Texas for a month, and was now being rented to move a family from Dallas to Morehead. The family had stopped in Durham for a meal, and was heading back to the highway. As the truck approached a certain overpass, its engine revved into the red and then died.

This overpass. This _bridge_. It had been raised to twelve feet, four inches less than a year before, so the truck could fit safely under. But _no_. No!

That fateful Penske rental had started out fine. A family move from Atlanta to Durham when the Penske truck was nearly brand new, the youngest child of the family riding with her father in the truck's cab. The driver kept saying to his daughter how the engine sounded like a purr. When the truck was being unloaded at the new house, the child came up to the side of the truck. "You're a very big cat," the child whispered, pressing a Carolina Panthers sticker to the fender.

The truck had been very happy.

An hour later, the father had taken a wrong turn and driven the truck through a too-low overpass. The scream of metal as the whole top of the truck sheared off and the tires spun and shredded had been followed by hours of agony waiting for help to come, miles aboard a flat bed tow to Penske's repair shop only to be pronounced totaled on arrival.

No wonder the truck's engine had stayed dead.

The driver tried several times, but the truck wouldn't start up again. After a tow to the Ryder rental office in Durham, the truck's contents were unloaded and the family was able to continue to Morehead in a different vehicle. The truck was left for the mechanics to look at the next day.

There were two, an older man named Lucas and his hotshot young apprentice. She was also his granddaughter, Michaela. Lucas tried the engine and found that it started up immediately.

"Probably they flooded it," the hotshot young apprentice mechanic said.

Lucas raised his eyebrows. "Would've been fine by the time the tow showed up," he pointed out.

"I'll check the OBD codes," Michaela said and did just that. The truck liked being connected up to the diagnostic computers. It was soothed by their quiet questions and easy acceptance of its answers. Yes, its engine had raced and then died. No code, though. The programmers of its engine control module hadn't thought to put in a code for "afraid of bridge."

She checked the ports, the fuses, the wiring: nothing. It wasn't for nothing that her grandfather called her hotshot, though. She checked the GPS, which showed her exactly where the engine had died, and she checked Google Maps for the location, and she recognized it.

She had seen videos. Horrifying videos of truck destruction, and she knew trucks were just mindless machines, but -- she didn't want even a mindless machine to have to face that sort of situation if it so obviously didn't want to.

The truck felt a new module slip in quietly to nestle up against its engine control module in its onboard computer. A quick run of the new module and the truck saw a certain intersection erased from its onboard GPS, as if it didn't exist. Now any route generated would go around, not through.

Each time the GPS maps updated, the truck could run the module again. Until it was ready to face the bridge, Michaela's module would route the truck around the danger.

***

In her first chassis, Celeste had been a Ford Pinto. She had had lovely green paint and been driven by a student at Duke, and then when he graduated and received a new red AMC Gremlin, by his younger sister. She had crossed under The Bridge many times in that chassis and had developed a fondness for it. It was very polite, always greeting her when she passed underneath, and even remembered her name after the first year.

One day in her fifth year in that chassis, she was parked next to The Bridge while her driver had dinner nearby. She and The Bridge, and a Datsun named Shelly, were having an enthusiastic debate about whether the baseball team should be called the Bulls or the Triangles (The Bridge was very fond of triangles, Celeste and Shelly argued that while triangles were all well and good for a bridge, the Bulls was a much better name for something that ran around a diamond) when a truck ran right into The Bridge despite The Bridge’s repeat warnings that it was too tall.

“I am so so sorry!” the truck babbled as its driver pulled it over just past The Bridge. “I tried, but this driver is new, he didn’t realize how tall I am. Ooohhhh!” The truck wailed as it realized just how many pieces were missing from its top. “They’re going to scrap me for sure! And I so did like this chassis!”

The Bridge talked the truck down, reassuring it that many a truck had met with misfortune due to The Bridge’s small stature, and that it had seen many of them return and turn properly afterwards, and many others that had nice fine new chassis. Celeste had felt grateful that she was so young, still in her first chassis, and surely by the time she had a chassis over 11ft 8in The Bridge would have grown. They were good friends by that point and she couldn’t imagine not fitting under it.

In her second chassis, Celeste had been a Volvo station wagon. She was painted yellow and had way back seats that the family children had loved to ride in and make faces at the cars behind her. She didn’t see the bridge as much in that chassis, her family didn’t have much reason to go to downtown Durham other than the occasional visit to El Rodeo for a special occasion.

She missed their friendship, but that was the life of the car. The Bridge still greeted her each time she drove past. Sometimes she even stopped at the light long enough to have a brief conversation on how the Bulls were doing that season. She didn’t see any more crashes, but she knew from other cars that they still occurred. She even met a box truck once when her family was moving that had had its top peeled off when its rental driver had not heeded warnings and tried to drive under The Bridge. Celeste had shuddered and been grateful that she was still young.

In her third chassis, Celeste was a Mitsubishi Fuso FG140 dump truck. Her second chassis had lasted a long time, until her engine had finally cracked after nearly 25 years and her family had donated the chassis to public radio. So she had skipped the dreaded pickup stage and gone straight to a large dump truck.

Her driver had a family landscaping business that took her all over town. She didn’t enjoy having dirt in her dump bed all the time, but the little kids loved to watch her dump her loads, which was always fun. And with all the gentrification of downtown, she got to drive under The Bridge a lot. They still talked about the Bulls, but now they also talked about basketball and hockey (her driver was from Minnesota, Celeste had learned a lot about driving in the snow and hockey) and soccer.

The years went by and Celeste’s chassis began to need more and more repairs. She knew the time for a new chassis was coming, but she dreaded it. Cars generally got bigger as they got older (at least until they had all done their time as 18 wheelers and backhoes) and her next chassis might not fit under The Bridge. Over the years she had learned that bridges didn’t age like cars. They kept the same struts for years and years and only rarely got upgraded to larger spans.

But she had been hearing rumors that The Bridge might get raised. She didn’t bring it up with The Bridge, it would be inexcusably rude to talk about the state of another’s chassis, but she kept her antenna tuned as drivers and cars around her discussed it. Some drivers thought it served others right for not obeying the large flashing signs to turn, but others thought The Bridge should grow to allow more trucks to pass under.

Celeste’s chassis finally gave out before any definitive news had come on The Bridge’s struts. When she was finally settled in her next chassis, a box truck from a local farm that delivered fresh vegetables all over town, no one was talking about The Bridge anymore. She asked her driver’s other car, a very young blue Honda Civic named Annabelle, but Annabelle didn’t know what she was talking about.

On her first day of deliveries she approached The Bridge with trepidation. They had been friends for so long, she didn’t want to have to turn, but she was nearly 12ft and she knew she wouldn’t fit. They turned the corner on Gregson St and she waited for the sign to flash “Overheight Must Turn.” But the sign never flashed. The Bridge must have noticed her shock.

“I got taller!” It said, delighted in her surprise. “You’ll fit now until you become an 18 wheeler.”

Celeste revved her engine in delight.

“So how about them ‘Canes?” She asked as she passed under. With all the deliveries she would be doing, they would have plenty of time to discuss all the sports they wanted.

***

When EHD-1702 met 11foot8, she fell a little bit in love. Their meeting had been straight out of a fairytale, the perfect crash into hello.

"Quite literally," EHD-1702 adds, with a little bit of a besotted fender twitch. "Tore the top right off my cargo hold like she was opening a can."

A grizzled old truck tilts his mirrors at her and says, "You're mad."

The damage hadn't been serious, just enough to take EHD-1702 off the road while the damage to her wind deflector was repaired. So she spends the next couple weeks chilling in a technician's shop, trying not to think about the scrape of concrete over crumpling metal. Doesn't mean anything, EHD-1702 thinks. 11foot8 must see a hundred trucks like her a day.

The other trucks in EHD-1702's lot used to call her a bit of an emergency brake junkie. It's going to take you off the road for good one of these days, they'd always say. But what's wrong with liking the mechanical rush of a driver slamming both the horn and the foot pedal in a panic and then screaming over a wireless radio for help? There are years left in EHD-1702's engine, and so there will always be stores in need of a truck who are willing to foot the repair bills. So it's fine to live a little dangerously.

For the next two weeks, EHD-1702 keeps an eye on the news on the flat screen in the corner of the repair room. Another afternoon, another 11foot8 crash, another piece of ruin. So beautiful, EHD-1702 thinks. And so very thrilling.

It's a highway bend that gets EHD-1702, in the end. A couple tires lost by the road, the wrong distribution of weight in her cargo hold, and an emergency brake situation caused by a rogue chair in the middle of the freeway made her go wheels over head. There had been a six-car pileup. There had been _fire_.

At least, that's what EHD-1702 hears from the guy reading out the itemized bill to her increasingly distraught new owner. She honestly just wishes she could remember it because that sounds _awesome._

EHD-1702 does another couple years on a suburban circuit in the northeast hauling furniture for Office Depots, and then one day a long-haul passes through her truck stop. He regales all the trucks in the lot with the story of a truck-eating bridge down south. His description of crumpling cargo boxes sounds familiar, somehow. Like EHD-1702 has seen that scene in a dream before.

Out of a little bit of intrigue and a little bit of morbid curiosity, EHD-1702 makes heading down south her first priority. It takes another few months of hopping from department store outlet to department store outlet all down the east coast before she finally ends up in the Triangle again.

When she gets to Gregson Street, however, she sees that the bridge has been raised.  
The bridge formerly known as 11foot8... is now 11foot8+8.

EHD-1702 is 11'11''. (There had been a truck in her lot with a height complex who never let her forget it, so now it's seared into her mind. And onto the side of her sleeper cab, but it's not like she can see around to check.)

That is to say, no crashes will happen to her here today.

That's a good thing. Objectively speaking. In the large scheme of things, it's great. No crashes, no repairs, no damage, no expenses...

(... All right, EHD-1702 will not say she's not a tiny bit disappointed. She'd come all this way to see the bridge, after all, and she'd been promised! Promised! a crash. For some reason, she imagines the scrape of concrete over metal would be _shiveringly_ delightful.)

"Hey! Hey, EHD-1702, was it?"

It's the bridge. Pretty voice, EHD-1702 thinks. Like wind through leaves. As the truck passes underneath she rumbles back, "You know me?"

"Oh, that's right, you might not remember," the bridge sings. "A while ago, you were carrying cargo for the grocery store..."

"I'm happy for you," EHD-1702 calls back, and means it. Fewer accidents. 11foot8 - 12foot4, she corrects herself - will live longer and live better this way.

Still, what's truck life - or bridge life - without a couple life-threatening excitements here and there? As concrete whistles overhead, a little disappointment hits EHD-1702 all over again.

... and then from behind comes the terribly familiar screech of metal against metal, and the blare of a truck honking up a storm in pain. "Oh, no," the bridge's voice comes again, now with a little creak of panic in it. "Sorry, sorry, sorry - this wasn't supposed to happen! Not any more..."

As her driver pulls away from the bridge, EHD-1702 tilts her rearview mirrors and thinks, Oh yes.  
EHD-1702 has just learned that trucks do get taller than 12 foot 4. Now she just has to figure out how.


End file.
